Good morning. Is Gen Z helping to create an economy of affection here in the U.S.? I first heard that term as a student at the University of Nairobi, when a classmate had to host a relative stranger in her apartment for two months because this person came from her village. As she explained to me, that’s just what you did. In a society without deep pockets, social programs, or job security, the bonds of community, kinship, religion, and tribe created a network of support.
My son, 25, calls it the friendship economy: he’ll buy t-shirts and go to concerts for a friend in music, help with another friend’s startup or movie, or sometimes throw a little money into various projects through some peer-to-peer platform. As AI and an anemic job market spark anxiety about traditional career paths, entrepreneurial and creative pursuits—sometimes funded by one’s social network—become more attractive. Goldman Sachs projects the number of creators to grow from 67 million to 107 million by 2030 and the creator economy to generate half a trillion dollars by next year.
I recently spoke with Kickstarter CEO Everette Taylor about how these trends are playing out on his crowdsourcing platform, which enabled more than 24 million backers to spend close to $9 billion in funding 277,302 projects as of April 2025, creating more than 1 million jobs. (Kickstarter launched in 2009 and became a public benefit corporation six years later.) Taylor says there’s one factor that’s both a catalyst and a challenge in the creator space: AI.
“It leads them to being a creator or entrepreneur, which also leads more people to our platform,” said Taylor. But he’s unnerved by what the technology can create on its own, telling me that he asked ChatGPT to produce a script about a “Mosquito Man” from the Bronx and “it gave me a full film script. It was insane.”
AI can write the script. What it can’t manufacture is the circle of people willing to back you, so Taylor is leaning into the human side of the equation.
Kickstarter cohosted a special event with smart projector brand XGIMI yesterday in Times Square, showcasing technology launched on the platform, including XGIMI’s new AURA 3 laser TV that raised a record $10 million in two hours. The goal was not just to promote the product but to create a sense of community, reinforcing Kickstarter’s brand campaign that kicked off this summer with the tagline “belief is human.”
“You go around Times Square and what do you see? Nothing but AI, AI, AI ads,” said Taylor. But on his platform, backers seem to be voting the other way. One 2026 study tracked 63,000 Kickstarter campaigns and found projects with the “AI use” label raised about 40% less money and drew almost a quarter fewer backers. People want to know they’re supporting human-generated work and the human behind it.
“We believe in the importance of human creativity no matter how much AI advances things,” said Taylor, who launched a $1 million Kickstarter Culture Fund to help independent creators make a living. “I don’t care if you have a million followers on social media. Those 25,000 people that you have on Kickstarter, those are your true supporters.”
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
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CEO Daily is curated and edited by Jay Ganglani, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.